Activity-based costing system (ABC) adopters reported different uses of the system, inconsistent amounts of benefits gained, and consequently varying levels of satisfaction with the system. This study aims to investigate the variation in the extent of use, the magnitude of benefits, and user satisfaction with the ABC. A structured questionnaire was sent to the manufacturing companies operating in Riyadh Province, Saudi Arabia. 75 responses from ABC implementers were received. The results of this study show that the degree of ABC implementation success positively influences the extent of its use, the magnitude of benefits that have been obtained, and the overall user satisfaction with the system. These findings imply that irrespective of the characteristics of the company or the features of the system, the way the companies implement ABC might determine how much benefits can be gained and to what extent the system could be used.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption of an Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system to provide relevant cost information for enterprises in the business of building and selling Internet of Things (IoT) based products. The research is constructed over the relevant themes identified in previous research about ABC. An important issue that emerges from the analysis is that cost is a function of the volume of production and this notion of production does not represent the source of value generation discussed in this work. A functioning of a smart and connected product requires a cloud-based system for operating and monitoring it throughout its life. The implication of collecting and processing data is that costs essentially changes depending on the volume of data stored and the complexity of intended analytics that would require more qualified analysts. The estimation of costs related to data analytics and products’ monitoring serve as a reference to forecast future expending during the lifetime of products. This research is the first to provide a theoretical discussion on ABC assumptions in the context of IoT business models.

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a method, which identifies activities in a firm and assigns the expenses of each activity with resources to all products and services based on the real consumption by each. This method allocates more overhead costs into direct expenses compared with conventional method. ABC method is normally used for costing as well as monitoring different activities, which involves tracing resource consumption. This paper presents a survey on advances of ABC based method. The study has discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of ABC based method in different industries. The survey also discusses recent advances on time driven ABC method in health care industries.